As is his wont, My Father has told us something on short notice. Monday morning I was woken up by an unfamiliar voice. Turns out it was a contractor. I had heard rumblings from him that the house remodel isn't done yet, but from this guy's visit he had decided that the next phase, which is redoing the living room and gutting the upstairs/my bathroom, was going to happen. And that night he told me that that happens starting this (Tuesday) morning.
Well, that's one way for me to wake up when my parents want me to wake up, that's for damn sure.
This morning I was woken up by a familiar voice: my Mother, who was busy making noise in the bathroom. Well, if they're redoing the bathroom, stuff needs to be taken out of the bathroom. Forgot that. So I woke up and helped Mother take out the stuff I wanted to keep -- my toothbrush and toothpaste, the facial soap, the toilet paper roll.
My morning haze lifted when I realized that the bathroom I have known since birth will be gone. I'm not one of those guys who thinks rooms need updating because I was totally OK with the purple tile in the tub and shower, the tile pattern on the floor, the towel rack above the toilet, and the toilet paper dispenser at the perfect length away from the toilet. All of those fixtures I've remembered as long as I can remember. I'm certain they've been here since my parents moved into the place back in the early eighties. (The toilet is being replaced as well, but I remember when I was in, like, the second or third grade when they put a new one in. My brother and I "christened" it by peeing into it at the same time. Father and his friend who helped him install it watched while we did it. I don't know what we were thinking.)
So before I left the bathroom and the house (I can't go back to sleep nor do anything now that there are two contractors to tear the rooms down and Father staying at home to oversee things), I do the same thing I do whenever I leave a hotel room at the end of a vacation: Say goodbye to the fixtures. Farewell, toilet. So long, towel rack. Thanks, toilet paper dispenser. Till we meet again in another life and time, tub and shower. (Hold on ... I just remembered that Father has changed the shower head a couple times before, the last time being about 20 or 25 years ago. So that's not an original fixture, just one that's been useful and trusty for a long time.) I love you, purple shower tile.
(I will say that the spigot has leaked for a long time, so maybe it's good that's being taken out. Oh, and for a long time the wires were somehow crossed or something, because the temperature dial on the tub sink was backwards: When you turn it counter-clockwise the water turned colder, even though the dial says it's supposed to get hotter, and vice versa. If they fix that, that's good. And one more thing: I've never been sure, but the shower pipes may be dripping. Some times I hear drops coming through the walls, and it's possibly from the shower. Or, it might be coming from the sink. I don't know, but if the leaks stop because of this second phase of remodeling, I'm all for it.)
After that, I went off to Rosedale and a movie, forgetting that all of it will be gone by the time I come back.
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When I did come back, not all of it was gone. The toilet remains, so at least I can have my throne for one more day and shit in peace. Tub's still there, too. But the towel rack, toilet paper dispenser, purple tile and cosmetic features around the tub sink and shower assemblies have been removed. Because of the walls, it still looks the same. But then, it looks different, you know?
Meanwhile, the living room has changed a lot. One side of the living room was made up entirely of brick facings attached to a wall. I remember a long time ago when Father, his friend, and I think my uncle and aunt took turns building up that wall. One time I woke up to a sound from that room, and when I went upstairs (long ago I slept in the same bed as Grandmother and my brother, which is now Father's computer room) I saw Father and his friend. Father told me the equivalent of, "Nothing, go back to sleep." And so I went downstairs to sleep.
Shit, I also remember a brick falling down and busting to pieces after they got done with it. It happened a few times in the first, oh, several years after it was completed. You'd be sleeping in the middle of the night and then crack! you'd hear a brick fall to its demise. Occasionally Grandmother or I would have to sweep up the pieces from behind the piano. To their credit, I guess, I don't remember hearing a brick fall since ... oh, since I came back from college.
The contractors ripped all those bricks down from that wall. The spackle behind it, too. All that work they put into it in the mid-80's, and now it's all gone. It seems weird. It feels like Father is undoing all that sweat and work I remember him putting into creating that wall 25+ years ago. But maybe the loss of that is triggering a wave of nostalgia in me.
The wood stations in the half-walls separating what are now the living and dining rooms, the ones where we put the mail? Gone. They went so far as to saw off pieces of the half-walls, including one on the side of the narrow opening between the hallway and the kitchen. I think Father had that part removed because a coupe weeks ago we had a hell of a time moving the refrigerator back into place after the first phase of the remodel, when the kitchen was redone. The counter put in was bigger, so we couldn't move the fridge back through the passage between the kitchen and the dining room. Father had to take out both its doors so we can shimmy it through that hallway-kitchen opening. I guess so that it never happens again (?), he had the contractors slice off about three inches' worth off that half-wall.
The changes should continue. If what I overheard is correct, they're going to re-do the floor outside and in the upstairs bathroom. It's going to be fucking noisy, and then things aren't never going to be the same.
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Because I've had to say goodbye to the fixtures I grew up with, and for many other minor reasons (I need to finish the half-gallon of 2% milk I bought and "expired" Sunday, I felt guilty for drinking Pepsi after taking a shower after my four-plus-hour nap this evening, I have other chocolates I'm saving because I can't those right now), I decided to make a change of my own, though a very, very minor one. And it's also a strange one.
When I was a temp for Carlson Companies way back in, uh, I'd like to say 1999, my great supervisor gave me a gift: A piece of chocolate shaped in an early-version cellphone (you know, before flip phones you had that huge one with a three-inch penis antenna that had the same weight as a brick?) with "Sprint PCS" stamped on its display screen. I like chocolate, but for some reason I haven't eaten it. Till now.
Oh yeah, to "mourn" the "passing" of the bathroom and living room I grew up with, I thought I might as well get around to finally eating that chocolate. Why haven't I eaten it before? Don't know. I guess I've never had the time to get around to it. Why didn't I throw it away? Dude, it's chocolate. Besides, chocolate doesn't go bad, does it? Does it turn toxic or something?
Well, if it is, it's a time-release poison, because I ate it just before 3:30 a.m., just as I was watching "The Mix" on World News Now, and I'm not dead. But it wasn't really good, either. When I ate the chocolate phone, I tasted graphite. That's not a sign that it's spoiled, I hope. It's just that I have stored this chocolate in my desk (I don't think I immediately brought the phone home from Carlson Companies and put it in my desk, I think it laid around on the floor of my bedroom for, oh, a couple years before I finally put it away for safe-keeping), in the long, center droor -- where I put my pencils. I didn't know chocolate can absorb odor. But I guess it can, especially after 12, 13 years of entrapment.
The chocolate wasn't bad, but the odor was enough for me to stop eating the chocolate two-thirds of the way through. I was going to save the display part of the choco-cell (where it says "Sprint PCS") for, uh, when I can drink the last bit of 2% I still have, maybe as soon as tomorrow. But then I thought, what the hell, I might as well eat the whole thing now and be done with it. But after tasting it, I think I can wait. It'll be gone entirely though. Don't want a two-thirds-eaten chocolate phone in my drawer, 'cause that's nasty. Besides, finish what you start.
And then I can say farewell to another thing that's been a part of my life before the turn of the millennium.
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